VFX Vault is a Unity Editor browser for visual effects. It scans your project, builds a catalog, generates thumbnails, previews selected effects, and helps you organize everything with categories, tags, and favorites.
VFX Vault indexes supported prefabs, builds a catalog, and gives you a dedicated browser for reviewing effects without fighting the Project window.
The catalog is the center of the tool. The scanner fills it, the browser reads it, the thumbnail system decorates it, and the preview system uses it to load and inspect the selected asset.
The window is organized around a three-panel layout. Each panel has a single job so the flow from scanning to previewing stays uninterrupted.
Open the VFX Vault window from the Unity Editor menu (see the package readme for the exact menu path). From there you can rebuild thumbnails or focus the catalog asset when the tool provides those actions.
The interface is built around three columns: a category sidebar, a card-based browser area, and an inspector preview panel for the selected asset.
Search text, selected category, and favorites mode combine to determine the visible result set. The window caches filtered results and schedules certain refreshes to stay responsive.
Page size can be manual or automatic. In Auto mode, the tool calculates how many cards fit based on current browser width, spacing, and card size.
The inspector area shows a larger preview, metadata, favorite state, tags, category assignment, and utility actions like pinging, opening, or refreshing the selected asset.
Browse folders and categories, create new ones, rename them, delete them, and assign assets into category nodes.
Search entries, browse cards, view favorites, change page size, switch pages, and optionally use hover previews.
Preview the selected effect, change quality, pause or restart playback, edit tags, mark favorites, and save metadata.
Under the hood, the tool follows a predictable sequence: open, scan, catalog, render, preview, persist. Each phase hands off to the next so browsing stays fast and your library stays consistent.
The browser loads or creates the catalog asset, builds the UI Toolkit layout, and applies the packaged stylesheet.
The scanner finds supported prefabs in your project, then creates or updates the matching catalog entries.
Each entry stores asset metadata such as GUID, path, category, tags, favorite state, and thumbnail hashes.
The thumbnail system renders off-screen previews and saves PNG thumbnails under the generated asset folder.
When an asset is selected, the inspector preview session loads it into a hidden preview setup for orbiting and playback.
Favorites, category assignments, and tags are stored in the catalog and survive editor restarts.
Discovery, catalog storage, the browser window, and preview thumbnails are separate concerns that stay in sync through the catalog. You work entirely inside the Editor UI; you do not need to touch any packaged files.
Indexed asset types, folder and category nodes, individual library entries, and the persistent catalog ScriptableObject work together. That catalog is the long-lived record of what the tool knows about your project.
The catalog is the persistent database the browser reads from. Scanning, thumbnails, and previews all stay aligned by reading and updating that single serialized store.
The package is distributed as a finished Unity Editor tool. Unsupported changes to shipped sources may break updates or licensing expectations. The module list below is for transparency only.
NowBrowserWindow.csMain Editor window and UI controller. Builds the UI, handles search, filtering, pagination, selection, preview controls, dialogs, overlays, and metadata save flow.
NowBrowserWindow.uxmlUI Toolkit layout file. Defines the structure of the sidebar, main browser area, inspector panel, modal dialogs, and loading overlay.
NowBrowserWindow.ussWindow stylesheet. Controls visual identity including panel surfaces, card states, sidebar styling, headers, buttons, dialogs, and layout spacing.
NowAssetAdapters.csAsset-type discovery layer: determines which prefabs in the project qualify for indexing. The shipping build focuses on Particle System content.
NowLibraryCatalog.csDefines the tool's serialized data structures: asset types, category or folder nodes, library entries, and the persistent catalog ScriptableObject.
NowLibraryScanner.csRuns project scans, updates entries, keeps the catalog in sync, handles missing assets, and applies category seeding rules for newly discovered content.
NowThumbnailGenerator.csCreates and persists thumbnails using preview rendering. Manages content hashing, rebuild logic, framing, simulation, and thumbnail file output.
NowLibraryPreviewSession.csOwns the interactive inspector preview. Instantiates the selected prefab in a hidden preview environment and supports orbit, pan, zoom, playback, and quality modes.
NowCardHoverParticlePreview.csHandles lightweight hover previews used on cards when live motion previews are enabled in the browser.
NowLibraryAssetPostprocessor.csReacts to imported or moved assets, applies import settings to generated thumbnails, and schedules pending-import evaluation for new VFX content.
NowLibraryPendingImportNotifier.csTracks new supported content roots and shows a browser banner so the user can decide when to rescan rather than having automatic changes happen silently.
NowLibraryEditorTheme.csCentralizes editor-side theme values, icons, and styling helpers for the packaged window.
NowLibraryUtility.csShared helper layer for paths, catalog creation, migration, folder setup, hashing, safe saving, tree helpers, and editor persistence support.
Most issues fall into a handful of recurring patterns. Start here before digging into logs; the common ones are covered below.